The standings start to come into focus once the boats turn the corner and begin the final leg of the race from Cabo to the finish. There are different ways to look at handicap rated standings on a course like PV. The formula for Distance to Finish (DTF) can be a straight line to finish which may be a straight line over Baja Peninsula, or use a curved DTF that more accurately accounts for the racers path on course. But once the boats are clear of the end of Baja, the math should be the same. It is also important to know if the predictions are using recent boat speed or average velocity made good (VMG) for the whole race. See the standings reports via a spreadsheet set up by SDYC's Greg Stewart to provide the daily morning standings linked on the PV Race home page (Wednesday's Standings).

As of Wednesday midday, five boats have negotiated the wind shadow under Cabo, including the top 2 boats on the leaderboard, Sizzle and Bretwalda3. They are now enjoying the thermal winds kicking down from the Sea of Cortez and racing hard for the finish line at Punta Mita. The smallest boat in the fleet, Bill Hardesty's Hobie 33 Sizzle currently holds a corrected time advantage of one hour over Bob Pethick's Rogers 46 Bretwalda3. Pethick is a past overall winner of the PV Race back in 2014 when they finished the race in about 4 days, 20 hours.

The Santa Cruz 50/52 Class 4 has had two of six boats retire in this year's race. Also, Horizon maintains a significant lead, 20 miles in front of their nearest Class competitor Triumph. Triumph is 15 nm off Cabo and Horizon is 30 miles off Cabo. The chips are down on this strategic play. Watch the tracker to see who wins....Assuming the generalizations hold true, that the breeze is better offshore, Horizon is likely to win the class. Then the battle for 2nd is real, with Hana Ho, Blond Fury and Triumph within 1.5 corrected hours of each other. They are spread out all over the course. More chips on the table...

Triumph:

"The fun starts tonight! Saw dozens of 4ft diameter turtles just lounging out side of Mag Bay."

All 5 Class 2 boats continues to rank in the top 10 overall. Peligroso is the farthest along the course and could sail in different conditions than the rest of her competition, allowing for potential gains.

Erik Brockmann and the Viva Mexico team are sailing their first race aboard their new VO65, and are looking forward to winding it up and letting it run on the final 200+ miles to the finish.

"We are just off Cabo trying to get past the shadow. The race has been great and has kept us awake all the time as it has definitely been a hard one with many wind transitions. Also learning a lot on the boat in this light air conditions which we know are not ideal for Viva Mexico but working hard to keep her moving! Crew is enjoying the race and now ready for a nice ride to PV from Cabo but all well. Yesterday we had to whales less than 10 meters from the boat so which was great as we were going slow, watching them when you are sailing fast makes you a little nervous".

Pyewacket 70 is on course to be the first to finish, currently estimated to be at the finish line around 1930 PST, followed by Cabron before sunrise Thursday.

Stay tuned to the race tracker, and boats are to active AIS when within 25 miles of the finish through their arrival at the dock.

Follow the race tracker with hourly position updates (on a 4 hour delay). Visit www.pvrace.com for more information.